It’s great that the work requirement for FoodShare recipients has resulted in nearly 12,000 employed Wisconsinites who were formerly out of the job. But framing about 41,000 people’s loss of benefits as a success is rather problematic.

Apparently, Gov. Scott Walker has been making rounds through the state recently proclaiming his good news in hopes of promoting investments in a worker training program for those on food stamps.

Granted, this worker training program, which can help people become employed, seems like a pretty decent idea on the surface. But at the end of the day, this job must be able to provide the person with enough financial stability so they can save enough to work their way out of the unfortunate circumstances they’ve fallen under. One of the problems with the work requirement system is the fact many of these people are being sent to work part-time jobs that pay minimum wage — and it’s not hard to see how working around 20 hours a week for about $7.25 per hour is not enough for someone to turn their life around.

Now, someone can blame that on the minimum wage, but the bigger issue with the work requirements for the FoodShare program is the fact that those enrolled in the program must be working at least 20 hours a week between employment, volunteering or job training within a three-month period after enrollment in order to continue to receive benefits.

I guess it’s really not too surprising to see that almost 41,000 people lost their FoodShare program benefits last year, and the majority of these people lost the assistance they received from the program because they couldn’t meet the work requirements.

The issue is that last year, Wisconsin didn’t apply to extend the waiver of that three-month deadline, which the federal government made available for states with high unemployment rates. Maybe it was optimism and maybe hindsight is 20/20, but the fact of the matter is we kind of dropped the ball on that one.

Sure, unemployment rates have been declining in the last few years, but either way, three months is not a lot of time for someone to get back on their feet after unfortunate circumstances have caused them to enroll in the FoodShare program.

The three-month deadline period should be extended, and furthermore, the number of hours a person has to work, volunteer or spend in training per week should be reduced. If a person is putting forth effort to improve their life but can’t reach the 20-hour weekly minimum, it doesn’t make sense to punish them.

The work requirement for Wisconsin’s FoodShare program has resulted in almost 12,000 employed Wisconsinites, but this number does not make up for the overwhelming amount of people who have lost the assistance they relied on.

Phil Michaelson ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in biomedical engineering.